Cirque Éloize Audition: Part I of IV (Patreon)

Today's write-up is an overview of the Cirque Éloize audition I did this past Wednesday, November 9th (and the 48 hours preceding it).

Re-cap: 

For the past 10 days, I was in the studio at Artists' Play (Toronto) from 9:00am until 3:00pm most days, to whip up & rehearse a short 3-minute number: the 6-minute monstrosity that will one day be Barbette was nowhere close to being in shape to share with a bunch of casting humans, but I wanted to show what I'd been working on for the last year. 

There was no information on if we'd be asked to present solos (but it could safely be assumed we'd have a chance to present something), if there were time parameters to those presentations, how the audition day might be structured, etc. I settled for taking some of the movements & sequences that belong in Barbette, gluing bits & pieces together in different combinations, and setting them to a short piece of music.

If nothing else, I rationalized, this'll be a good process to help me tighten up some of the tricks and shapes that need elbow grease anyways for 'Barbette'. It'll be a good creative break for my brain to put these things in an act-environment that isn't 'Barbette'.

You had to register and submit an application to attend the audition (your headshot, CV, videos, work experience, etc), but that did not guarantee that you would be selected to attend said auditions. We were supposed to wait to hear back.

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When I got back to Toronto from Montréal in October, I had a practical problem: I needed to find people willing to "pull lines" for me. AKA, hang on to the other end of a rope (generally attached to a 4-to-1 pulley system) and haul me up and down in the air so that I can do tricks and movements that require my feet to be off the floor.  (AKA, how I get up real high like in the image below)

Pulling lines isn't easy work: you need to be strong, attentive, and –like most things– it requires a bit of practice to be good at it. 

My friend Mary-Margaret Scrimger generously offered to pull lines for me in Toronto, and we tried for a few sessions –– but I'm dense (we figured I'm somewhere in the ballpark of 30 to 35 lbs (around 15kg) heavier than her;  when I'm doing dynamic tricks on straps, the puller has to be strong enough to resist that extra force.  I was burning MM out just doing small pulls to practice the drills I needed to run to keep my tempos, flare-to-flags, and switches moving in the right direction. In the end, she wasn't strong enough to pull me up and down for act runs.

I had to figure out a different solution, and that solution came in the form of ingratiating myself / weaselling into the pulling rotations that were happening with another group of professional artists who happened to be in the studio quite a bit when I got back from Montréal: 

I've known both LeeAnn Ball and Glory Dearling more distantly as fellow professionals in the Toronto community for years now, but we'd never really interacted in training, shows together, or even very much online. Glory was working on an aerial net act; LeeAnn was pushing herself to complete an aerial hoop act.

We all needed pulls, and it was less draining and more repeatable if two people were on the other end of the line for someone running their act. LeeAnn and I would pull for Glory; Glory and I would pull for LeeAnn; and Glory and LeeAnn would pull for me. 

So, during the 10 days leading up to the Éloize auditions my day looked like this:

0715, wake up, chug a litre of water, caffeinate, shove food in face

0830, leave the house

0850, arrive at Artists' Play

0900, begin warm-up

1000, Glory & LeeAnn arrive; set-up the 4-to-1 pulley on the high point

1030, Dynamic drills (switches/tic-tacs, tempo work)

1100-1200, Sequence practice & act runs

1200-1330, Swap out equipment; pull lines for Glory with LeeAnn

1330-1500, Swap out equipment; pull line for LeeAnn with Glory

Time-efficient? Perhaps not.  But was there any other solution I could think of that was reasonable and repeatable in terms of finances and time? Nope. 

So it was a novel experience to throw myself into heavy rotation with these 2 artists. I got to know both of them better over the course of the past 2 weeks, and we all agreed to keep one another in the loop if any of us heard anything from Cirque Éloize regarding our audition application submissions.

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By Sunday, I still hadn't heard anything from the Casting Department at Cirque Éloize with regards to whether or not I might be receiving an invitation to attend the auditions. Nobody else I knew –in Toronto, in Montréal, in the States– seemed to have heard anything, either. 

The final weekend before the audition rolled around and decisions had to be made: we all opted for making our way to Montréal at the start of the week so that we'd be present in the city and ready to attend at Éloize if we heard from them. If not ... well, we'd all find productive ways to fill in the gaps.

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Your next instalment will be landing on Thursday morning, 11am EST!

Part III will arrive on Saturday;

 Part IV will arrive on Monday

[They'll all written, so there won't be any family-emergency-induced bait-and-switch like the final {still-owing} two instalments of Barbette's Skeleton]

[which, since we're on the subject, are next on the chopping block to be completed and shared with you all; I just wanted to get these writings out to you about the Éloize audition because it just happened]

Until then, stay strange & wonderful!

XO Ess